By Cornelius Nunev


Being a musician professionally sounds like a fairly sweet idea for many individuals. Concerts, the open road and some think, a ton of money. However, it's not much of a living, even for groups that get a ton of interest, as the price of touring is through the roof.

Touring really costly

A lot of people might imagine the life of a touring musician involves plush tour buses, groupies, endless partying and lots of cash. Maybe for some, but most bands or artists trying to make a living don't make much of one.

It is quite interesting when you think about what The Dresden Dolls, a Boston group, made on their tour, according to a 2007 NPR interview. The two in the group, Brian Viglione and Amanda Palmer, only made $1,500 a month from the tour each. That is not a ton of cash for spending time in a record deal and touring. They even opened from some pretty big gigs.

That's $18,000 per year, supposing they tour each month of the year.

Granted, they also had earnings from CD sales -- royalties of $1 per CD sold -- and merchandise.

May get better with more enthusiasts

Shane Blay, a member of the band Oh, Sleeper, a metalcore band that's been around for several years, posted prices of touring during a typical day on the road, on MetalInjection. Bands, he states, basically make cash on tour from guaranties, a fee for playing which differs by location, and selling merchandise like T-shirts and so forth. What he'd noticed was that an average for a "mid-level" group like his was $300 per each category, an income of $600 per night.

Of the $300, the band had to pay to print the shirts, which costs $7.50 per shirt that they sell at $15. The band's manager gets a 15 percent cut while the location charges about 25 percent. That means of the $300 in merchandise sales, the band really gets $63.75. Of the $300 for playing at the location, the band gets $225 before travel expenses since the band manager gets 15 percent and the booking agent gets 10 percent. After all the travel expense, it is really only $78.75 total per night since it costs about $10 a day for food and $150 for fuel between gigs.

The band ends up getting $13.12 a night when divided six ways, which does not contain additional emergency costs.

Get paid as a celebrity

The Daily Mail explained that the very best way to make cash while touring is to be large enough that enough tickets will sell to make the additional cash. Roger Waters toured in 2010 which made about $90 million. The costs were only $60 million, which means he made a lot of extra cash.

NBC News explained that most groups were close to having to terminate tours and quit because of gas costs in 2008. Most young bands struggle more than you would know.

And just in the event one might be wondering, yes, it DOES hurt the band when an individual downloads music for free.



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